Final Day

This morning we woke early to take a mountain flight over the Himalayas.  I've now seen the roof of the world.  The whole range is magnificent, but of course everyone wants to see Mt Everest.  Here are a couple of pictures of the peak.

Mt. Everest is the middle of the three peaks in the shot below.  This picture is much clearer as it was shot out of the cockpit.  It's good to know that the pilot's windshield is much clearer than the passenger windows.  All the passengers got a chance to go up to the cockpit to have a look. 

We're now packing and going out for brunch before we head out on out first leg of our trip home.  It's been a memorable trip for me, but it's time to go.

Hey Judith, thanks again for asking me to tag along.  Maybe we'll do another trip again?  Hint hint.

A Himalayan View and Bahktapur

This morning for our last full day in Nepal, we headed 32 kms east of Katmandu to Nagarkot, a village in at the head of the Kathmandu Valley where you can get views of the Himalayan mountain range.  It seems wrong to go all this way without catching a glimpse of this iconic mountain range, so when our guide suggested it yesterday to put on our agenda, we jumped at it.  This is a popular day or overnight trip for residents from Kathmandu to take.  

Unfortunately it was a bit hazy and so you couldn't see much.  But we did catch this glimpse.  I don't have a wide angle lense on my little point and shoot; it would have come in handy today.  Nagarkot is about 2100 feet high; the mountains you can see are about 7500 feet high.  Our guide reamed off a few names of the peaks but I could only remember Langtang.  We're viewing the eastern Himalayan range in this picture.  It's not clear enough to see Everest although people tell me it is possible when there is no clouds or haze. 

I like the valley view although my camera doesn't do the scene justice.  The farms on the hilside are terraced throughout the entire valley.  It's hard to pick up that detail in the picture.  

Here's a better picture that shows the terracing.  This shot was taken as we were driving down the mountain.  

Our guide suggests we walk for a few minutes to take in the countryside and scenery.  It's our first walk in the countryside free of noise!  It's heavenly.  If we hadn't walked this short stretch we would've have missed these goats along the side of the road:  

And this man carrying a freshly harvested giant bamboo trunk.  

After our walk we proceed on our way to Baktapur, a city which dates back to the 12th century.  It is the most well preserved of the historical cities in the Kathmandu Valley and of course is another Unesco Heritage site.  In 1934 the area was hit with a major earthquake that destroyed many parts of the medieval city.  Some of it was beyond repair and the loose rubble simply removed.  

The highlights of this medieval city includes:  

Nyatapola Temple, the tallest structure on site and one of the tallest in all of Nepal.  It's a Hindu temple, built in 1702 and has a pagoda-like structure in the upper section.  Judith and I climbed up these stairs and found that the hard part was climbing down due to the steep steps, narrow tread and lack of handrails.  If this structure was located in Canada, we'd never let people on it due to liability issues.  

This is the Golden Gate.  The detail on the gate is vey fine.  It is the entry door to the palace.  The palace was extensive and was built between 1700 to 1750.  

 This is known as Potter's square where the city's pottery industry is centred.  The finished clay items are dried out in the sun until they are ready for firing in the mud and straw kilns. 

These women were mixing the clay with this machine and the finished product is extruded.  The product is broken off into manageable sized rolls.  

There's a ton more things in this part of the city, but I have to call it a night.  Early tomorrow morning we're off to do one more thing before we start flying back home later in the day.  This will likely be my penultimate blog...

Kathmandu

We're enjoying our time here.  It's a relatively clean city (well, compared to India standards) with lots of history and culture.  Today we toured a number of Unesco world heritage sites.  It seems this part of the world is full of them.  But first things first:  breakfast.  

We got to sleep in until 8:00.  That's a bit of a luxury as we've had to rise early many times this trip to catch sunrises or get to destinations before the rest of the crowds.  So a sleep in and a leisurely breakfast on the hotel's rooftop dining area was heavenly.  At breakfast, we heard a parade going on the streets below.  I'm not sure what it was for---maybe a new year's celebration or more likely, one of the many protests going on in the city such as the one to have the Nepal Cricket team recognized in international play.  

We met up with our guide and driver and immediately drove to the first heritage site, Swayambhunath. It's a Buddhist Temple, but on site is a significant amount of Hindu shrines and carvings confirming that these two religions are closely inter-mingled, at least having a bunch of similar deities.  The Stupa is located on a hig hill overlooking Kathmandu.  We were dropped off in a crowded parking area and checked out some Buddhas at the entrance level.  The temple is also referred to as the Monkey Temple as a result of the many monkeys resident at the site.  

Up a long flight of stairs and we arrive at the stupa.  

Our guide tells us that Kathmandu Valley was once a lake and that this hilltop rose from the lake bed so that it was surrounded by this lake.  The first part of the name of this place means self arisen referring to the hilltop. 

The hilltop stupa grounds are stuffed with all sorts of religious figures with smaller out buildings serving as temples for all sorts of Buddhist and Hindu images.  

The stupa structure is ringed with prayer wheels and we walk around it to spin them.  Although I didn't intend to capture it, there are yet more people looking at Judith.  She's tiring of the attention particularly because one or two of them have walked right up to her and stared intently for at least half a minute while she's been trying to carry on a conversation with one of our guides.  It happened again today.

This site dates back to medieval times.  The stupas are popular in the morning and evening as people do their meditation by walking around and around.  There is a whole bunch of insense being burnt and purified butter lamps being lit.  

Here's the view of Kathmandu from the hilltop.

Next on the agenda was Braktapur Durbar Square, another Unesco Heritage site.  Durbar means Palace.  This is the site of the home of the former rulers of the city.  It contains many building of traditional architecture and they're spectacular and beautiful.  

In Durbar Square in we see a couple women selling coffee.  I took this picture of one of them because, well, I've never seen anything like it.  She has an airpot stuck in her vest.  

I forget the full story of this building, but reportedly, it what Kathmandu gets its name from.  This morning at the hilltop temple we mentioned to the guide about Judith's sore hip.  He said there was a shop at Durbar that could help out.  When we finished the sightseeing portion of this site we end up in a souvenir store.  There's some discussion between our guide and one of the staff about healing Judith's hip using a Tibetan Bowl and she agrees and proceeds upstairs.  I'm not missing this for anything so I ask to get in on the experience as the official photographer.  

We check out and listen to a number of bowls, eventually he chooses one and holds it to Judith's hip and strikes the side of the bowl with the wool topped mallet.  The vibration is transferred to Judith's hip and she tells me it's feels a lot like a treatment she's already getting at home except she feels the vibration at a much deeper level.  Apparently this vibration treatment cures all sorts of ailments.  I start looking for one that fits my head...

He then starts rubbing a circle around the outside of the water filled bowl on the floor with a mallet.  The vibrations start the water to bounce around and water starts splashing out of the bowl.  That was pretty cool, and Judith and I try that too.  

Then it's off to Unesco Heritage site #3, Pashupatinath Temple.  It wasn't really the temple we were after.  We went there to see the cremation sites along the sacred Bagmati River that flows into the River Ganga.  The temple site is large and we walked through a portion of it to see houses built into the sides of the cliffs rising out of the river's edge.  What was very interesting about this temple site is how the Hindu culture deals with end of life.  The burning of the body is a very public ceremony with crowds of people around--family, friends, religious people, and on lookers including tourists like me.  It's a ceremonial closure that seems OK to have lots of people about.  I took this shot from a long distance away out of respect for the families that were there, but I don't think that it would have mattered if I were closer.  

We had lunch at the Unesco Heritage site #4, Boudhanath Stupa, the same one we walked to yesterday.  Lunch was momos--a dish that Kathmandu is known for.  They're little dumplings much like potstickers or gyoza.  Here's mine below.  The shape reminded me of "haw gow", those little shrimp filled dumplings you can get at "dim sum".  Not all momos are green.  Mine was because at this restaurant the vegetarian ones are.  They were very tasty; I finished them all!

Here are some shots of the square from the restaurant.  Those are pigeons on the rooftops.  People feed these pigeons in the square below.  

Yesterday we walked around the outside of the stupa, but you can get on a higher level.  Remember everyone walks clockwise.  

There is a giant prayer wheel that we checked out after lunch.  Not a great picture but I wanted to show just how big it is. 

For dinner we arranged to go see and hear some Nepalese songs and dance.  I thought it was good until they asked us to go up on stage.  I elected not to subject myself to ridicule.  

Tomorrow more world heritage sites and maybe some Himalayan trekking!

 

Goodbye India, Hello Nepal

We left for the Varanasi airport at about 8:00 for our 12:30 flight.  Sure it was a bit early, but as it turns out, exiting India involves a lot more than steps than you would think possible.  Varanasi is a small airport with 3 gates making it smaller than Victoria's airport.  Security is an important issue for India; I saw at least 4 soldiers standing around with large rifles.  Here were the security steps to leave:

Step 1.  Bag Scan.  We had to pass our checked bag through a scanner.  Since we were so early we lined up at the only scanner that had people lined up at and mistakenly put our bags through the IndiGo airline scanner.  It was the only one that had staff working it; all the other two scanners were closed.  It turns out each airline runs its own scanners, so we had to wait another 20 minutes until the Air India scanner opened and put our bags through.  The bags are tagged to show they've been scanned.  

Step 2.  Flight Check In.  Once scanned we lined up to get our bags checked and seats assigned at the Air India counter.  That went smoothly.  They check your passport before issuing a boarding pass.  

Step 3.  India Exit processing.  We next went to the international travellers waiting area for processing by the India Government.  They need to check you out of the country.  There were about 6 employees here but they don't start processing anyone until most people for our flight were there.  So another wait of about 20 minutes until the processing lines open up.  The clerk stamps your passport takes a digital picture of you (retina scan?) and stamps your boarding pass twice.   

Step 4.  Security clearance into the security clearance area.  Before entering the security area we queue up to have someone check our boarding pass and passport that was just stamped about 10 steps away.  

Step 5.  Security Clearance.  We queue up to have our carry on baggage scanned.  Once the bags are on the scanner belt, there are separate male and female security lines to check your person.  The women have a modesty booth where they are searched by a female soldier.  The men are searched in the open.  They stamp your boarding pass to confirm you've passed the personal check.  Then over to pick up your carry on luggage.  My carry on luggage has been set aside.  They don't like the fact that I have my curling iron stuck into my metal water bottle to conserve space.  I have to open my carry to show my deadly curling iron.  They attach a stamped tag on both my purse and carryon bag to show these items have passed security clearance.  

Step 6.  Waiting for the plane to board,  We wait for the plane in the clearance area for Gate 1.  The gate is not listed on the board but everyone seems to congregate there.  Two people sitting nearby are hacking away.   I think we're there for 30 minutes or so.  

Step 7.  The gate number flashes up on the board and everyone is up like a rocket and to form a line snaking up the escalator to reach Gate 2.  

Step 8.  We're in a queue again waiting at Gate 2 for the boarding to commence.  Judith and I decide  to wait in nearby chairs.  Eventually the line begins to move, and we get up to join the line and get to enter the boarding runway.

The flight was short and uneventful.  It wasn't very full.  A boxed lunch and then we getting ready for landing.  We couldn't find our driver right away, so Judith went to investigate.  By the time she came back out she had already arranged for a different driver.  Fortunately, we had to go past the pick up area and this time spotting someone holding a sign with our names on it.  The time difference between Delhi and Kathmandu is 15 minutes.  It seems to be a why bother question for me.  

The drive into the city was just as crazy as India, except they don't have those tuk tuks and we didn't see any animal driven carts.  There are no cows on the streets either.  We chatted with our travel agent and filled out our trip with a few more things.

We got to the Hotel Tibet International and we got checked in.  Actually we just sat down in the chairs in the lobby, while the travel agent, Lila, checked in for us. That's him by the counter in the hotel lobby picture.  While he's checking us in, someone brought a hot steamed towel for us to freshen up with and some tea while we waited.  Lila's responsible for out Nepal trip portion so makes all the hotel, guide and sightseeing arrangements.  Staff seem to be excellent.  People speak English far better than India, we find out later that schools are taught in English using English language text books.  

  

We're impressed with our room as it's a suite.  That's great because we're here for 3 nights.  

We then went for a walk around the area.  It's located in the downtown area.  We were advised of a local attraction, a stupa, so we headed towards that.  The streets were much cleaner than our recent India experience.  No cows or goats is a big plus if you want clean streets.  It's clear that either someone cleans the street or residents don't litter or maybe both.  

A Stupa is a place of meditation for Buddhist monks.  They're usually conical in shape and contain the ashes of Buddhist monks.  This one is ringed with tourist shops selling Tibetan souvenirs.  Monks meditate by walking around in a clockwise rotation; hence everyone who comes and visits also does the same thing.  

We decide to eat an early dinner in one of the rooftop restaurants and I get to snap this picture.  While we're in the restaurant we hear some music being played.  It's the tail end of their New Year's Festival (Nepal use the same Gregorean calendar system as the Chinese), so this festival event had a Lakhe dancing around in front of the music. The Lakhe is a demon in Napalese folklore and protects the townspeople from evil. There was a huge crowd following the Lakhe and the band and of course everyone went clockwise around the Stupa.  

There are street beggers and Judith is a magnet for them because she stands out.  There seems to be more tourists here on a per capita basis than in India although that may be incorrect.  The vast majority of tourists in India are residents.  The streets are just as crowded as India, but we find that people are more likely to bump into you more.  There seems to be much less of that in India.  

When we got back, from walking the streets that evening, Judith decided to have a drink so we headed for the bar and she got the bartender to mix a drink up for her by relaying all the ingredients.  Ice, coffee, cream and Kahlua.  It's the first bit of alcohol either of us have had the entire trip, although I'll admit I'm not a drinker by any sense of the imagination so would never think to initiate such a thing.  

Then back to he room to check out the cricket match and get ready for the next day of sights.  

The River Ganga

We woke early (5:00 am!) to see sunrise at the River Ganga.  That's the Hindi name for the Ganges, the most sacred river for this religious group.  I've had a crash course on Hindu religion since arriving here in India.  It's definitely complicated with many deities, traditions, rituals, rules and religious subsets.  But one thing is clear for the roughly 1 billion people that follow this religion:  the River Ganga is the most sacred of all waters.  

Varanasi is a sacred site in its own right, so the combination of Varanasi and the River Ganga makes it an important destination for Hindu followers.  Hindus need to bathe in the river at least once in their lifetime to bathe away their sins.  There are millions of pilgrims that come here annually to meet this requirement.  It's considered holy to die by the Ganga and have your ashes scattered into the river and  there are retirement homes here so that you can make this happen.  

The purpose of our early morning rise was to go on a boat ride to see the ghats--the riverfront steps that lead down to the water and provide access to bathers, check out how laundry is done and the final life stage of cremation.  Unfortunately, it was foggy this morning so that if you were more than twenty feet from the shore, you couldn't make anything out.  We saw a lot of fog, and could make out hazy forms on the shore, but that was about it.  It was disappointing because the cruise was supposed to be the highlight to the Varanasi leg.  Here are some of the pictures from this morning:

Bathers:

The Hindu will put in flowers and a lamp into the river.  The lamp is a small pottery crock filled with oil.  

And this is the standard boat that you hire. The oar is made of a flat plank of plywood secured to a bamboo pole.

We finished the cruise and stepped off the boat to tour through the narrow streets of the old town.  I have referred to them as streets; in reality they are narrow lane ways.  If you stood shoulder to shoulder you might get 4 or maybe 5 people across.  In these narrow lanes, pedestrians, motorcycles, cows and other animals are permitted access.  When you add in retail storefronts, it's a crowded lane with all of these moveable variables trying to get somewhere. It's probably the section of town that travellers hate most about Varanasi because it's not clean due to all the cow dung, animal feces and trash -- and it smells bad--sometimes real bad.  Almost all the streets of India aren't clean, but the narrow lanes just make the yuckiness stand out a lot more.  Particularly because sometimes your choice of where you're going to plant your foot next is the lesser of two evils.    We saw a woman from large tour group who was wearing open-toed sandals...she was obviously not in her happy place.  Here's some shots of the lanes:

There were some important religious things to see and learn about in that old city and so we braved the streets and checked them out with our guide. Then out of the old city into the car to go back to the hotel for breakfast.  I had a nap after breakfast because I didn't get enough sleep last night.  Judith is always sleeping while I'm writing out this blog, so she's always catching a few more zzz's than I am each night.  

We met back up with our guide later in the morning and went out to see a couple more temples (surprise!).  We've seen more temples in India than I can remember and they're starting to blur--and we haven't even hit Nepal yet.  So we asked our guide if it would be possible to try the river cruise again to see the ghats since the fog had lifted.  And so he made it happen.  

These are the temple visits we did in today befor lunch.  This temple was dedicated to Lord Shiva and is located on one of the university grounds. This university is one of about 6 in the city and has over 37,000 students.  

This temple is known as the Mother India Temple and it has a big relief map of the country rather than your standard religious figures.  The relief map is made of marble.  It is supposed to personify India as a religious figure so that the people continue to defend India's right as a country.  It sound a bit off the wall to me--I suspect there aren't a lot of countries where this concept would work.  

The map is about 30 feet x 30 feet.   

After this tour we went back to the River Ganga for another boat cruise.  This time we were able to see all the different ghats including the two cremation sites.  It was interesting to see the river.  Here's one of the ghats.  

No photographs are permitted at the cremation ghats to respect the families.  The cremation ghats were quiet and didn't have many stairs.  They were a dirt slope to the water's edge.  There were multiple piles where bodies were being cremated.  I didn't see anyone near the piles; it seemed any family members present were remaining on site, but higher up on the hill.  

There is a 14 km sandbar in the river at Varanasi, and people go there to picnic.   The river is one of the most polluted in all the world--in the top 5 I think.  I did dip my hand into the water, but there's no way I would ever immerse myself into it.  Interestingly, it didn't smell bad at all.  Here we are on the boat.  

Judith wanted to row the boat, so we waited for a clear spot and asked the skipper if she could row.  To my surprise, he waved her over and she got into position.  Her rowing skills took us firmly in a tight circle.  The skipper helped her out for a while; Judith eventually found it better to concentrate on one oar while he worked the other.  

I took a turn at it as well and went more or less towards the direction we needed to go.  The oars were thick bamboo and hard to hold onto, but now I can add rowing the River Ganga to my list of things I've done.  

After this cruise we were driven to a silk factory.  You can't go travelling in India (or China) on a tour and not be taken to these factories/showrooms/retail stores.  The guide gets some form of compensation from the retail store and the retail store hopefully gets your business.  They always tell you that their store has the  best prices or the best quality or whatever they think you want to hear.  I guess you have the option of declining these tours, but I have a weakness in viewing factories and liked this silk one.  They still hand loom and you can tell the quality is better.  But I don't need or want a silk sari, shawl, table cloth or duvet cover, so they didn't get any money out of me.  The hand loom:

Back to the hotel for dinner.  We're off to Kathmandu tomorrow morning.  

Varanasi, A Spiritual City

 When the train ride from Delhi to Varanasi ended, Judith and I were still friends.  The train ride didn't match up to expectations.  Compared to Canadian standards, it's really a 5th class way to get from A to B.  

The overnight train seems to be a popular excursion for Indian residents.  People were way more prepared than Judith and I as they had brought nicely prepared meals and snacks.  There was some food available on the train but I didn't get anything because I wasn't hungry (late lunch) and I wasn't sure whether it was sketchy or not.  It was also hard to figure out what they were selling, because they came through the car so quickly and sitting up in our upper berths prevented us from establishing eye contact with them.  Judith ate a power bar; I skipped the whole thing.  

We got sheets, a blanket and a pillow for bedding. My bed was too warm for me; Judith's was too cold as the vent was right over her bed.  Somewhere there must have been the perfect mama bear's temperature, but we didn't get it.  Judith's bed was too short, but at least mine was fine as my height make me an ideal passenger for public carriers such as buses, planes and trains.   During the evening until about 10:00 the food venders came through regularly calling out what they were selling and that kept waking up Judith.  The train was noisy--whistle noises for leaving and passing other trains on the tracks, people noises and that end door closing with a bang.  

I did mention in my last blog just how hard the bed was.  Although it was impossible to get comfortable, we were both tired from the day and despite the fact that the overnight train trip wasn't the most ideal arrangement, we knew that we would eventually fall asleep.  There was one point in the night that we both woke up simultaneously from some loud noise and ended up looking over each other only to burst out laughing from the absurdity of the situation.  Oh well, an adventure, I guess.  

In the morning we met with the local rep who brought us to the hotel.  It's a modern place called the Hotel Ideal Tower.  Hot water and breakfast quickly made us whole again and we were ready to get going again.  

The hotel lobby.

We went and visited a few temples.  Here are some pics.  This is a Japanese Buddha temple. 

Here's the Chinese Buddha temple.

This statue was built 5 years ago to recreate the Bamiyan Buddha that was destroyed by the Taliban in Afghanistan.  It's the same height as the tallest one that was destroyed.  I can't remember the exact height; suffice to say this is a tall statue.  

Then it was back to the hotel before heading back out for an evening event.  We both needed a siesta to compensate for last nights sleep.  But there were some workers hammering on the other side of the concrete wall--the very wall where our headboard rested.  Two calls to the front desk didn't change the situation--I ended up walking into the room and gave enough non verbal clues to stop the chiseling so I could take a nap.  I was able to get a little nap in before the chiseling started back up again.  By this time the musty smell in the room was making Judith sick, so she asked and arranged for a room change.  Once settled, we got ready for the evening's event, a ganga aarti ceremony, a prayer to the Ganga (Ganges River).  Apparently the ceremony goes on every day.

The crowds coming into the event were busy. In fact the whole street is busy.  It's like this everyday and on special days, gets a lot worse.  It's hard to imagine a more crowed scene.

The event was staged on a ghat, one of those steps leading down to the river.  There are many of those here in Varanasi.  

We had dinner and then early to bed night to rise for 5:00 am.